


Wakanda 2019 (i’ve seen the lights go out in new mexico)

by Aenaria



Series: Interesting Times [7]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Incrediblesverse, Kidfic, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Road Trips, did I mention the spoilers?, it's the end of the world as we know it and the girls aren't going to take it lying down, post-apocalyptic...kind of, pregnancy fic, this means that all the bad shit that happened in that movie happened here also
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-05-14 04:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14762459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenaria/pseuds/Aenaria
Summary: So...that happened.  Thanos snapped his fingers, and the universe turned upside down.  Now, a very pregnant Darcy is stuck in New Mexico, half a world away from Steve, who’s still in Wakanda.  The plan is to get Darcy and Jane to Wakanda before the world goes too crazy, but given that a good part of the population is screaming that the Apocalypse is nigh, while another part is all too happy to take advantage of the resulting lawlessness, that may be easier said than done.An Interesting Times/Incrediblesverse story...kind of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this whole idea was inspired by two fic prompts left on my blog: 
> 
> Mcgregorswench: ShieldShock - when Steve says “oh god” (or something to that effect), after everything goes to hell, he’s actually thinking of Darcy who was at home pregnant with their baby/babies
> 
> Gerundsandcoffee: I wanna see Darcy and Jane realizing the other is OK :(
> 
> ...and then somehow it grew beyond the promps. By quite a bit. The story’s already a few chapters in on Tumblr, under the name of ‘Darcy and Jane’s Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip’, and I’ll be bringing all of those chapters over here to AO3 as well. I did add a lot more to this first chapter, though, so even if you have read the story on Tumblr already, I encourage you to take another look at the first chapter, because there's a lot more here that you haven't seen yet.
> 
> Technically, this is based in the universe of Interesting Times/Incrediblesverse, but I haven’t decided if its fully canon in that verse yet. The characters’ lives and situations and backgrounds are definitely from the Incrediblesverse, however, so while Infinity War largely had the same results here as in movie canon, some of the things that got them to that place are a bit different.
> 
> Including the timeline. In the Incrediblesverse, Darcy gives birth to Joey in 2019, hence the title (and kudos if you know where I got that title from - you share my kinda dorky taste in music and I love you for it) and so I've adjusted the MCU timeline to match that. Considering the state of the MCU timeline in general...yeah. No big deal.
> 
> All right, enough blather, on with the story.

Darcy knows the moment she sees her mother crumble into dust and float off into the wind in the tiny kitchen of their New Mexico apartment that whatever Steve had gone off to fight had done something very, very terrible.  And she can’t even get up off the couch to go see what had happened because her eight and a half month pregnant belly is making it nearly impossible for her to move with any semblance of speed. She sits, mouth agape, watching as the dust swirls, mingling with the breeze coming through the windows and twisting away into nothing.

The next thing she does is reach for the remote, flip on the television to see what the world’s reaction is, if this is just a pregnancy based hallucination or something far worse.  It takes less than thirty seconds for the emergency broadcast signal to start, a howling screech that emanates from the screen and her cellphone. Darcy’s gut clenches, all but drops to the floor, and she begins to wish that this is just a hallucination.

Then, she feels the baby shift about inside of her, driving an elbow one way and sending a foot kicking into her ribs.  That’s a sigh of a relief, a breath she didn’t even know she was holding - what if babies could get caught up in whatever was happening also?  But her little fighter’s kicking up a storm in her belly, announcing his presence loudly.

Throughout the day the TV blares on, Darcy flipping back and forth between the various news stations, watching as everybody on the planet tries to figure out what the hell had happened.  The newscasters that are still remaining - because any number of the usual faces have apparently disappeared into dust also - scream about the mass disappearances all around the world. The count is innumerable, immeasurable, but they’re suspecting in the billions, Darcy realizes with a breathless, shuddering gasp.  

What had caused the disappearances, however, no one really knows for sure.  Aliens are a popular choice, especially after the Battle of New York all those years back.  The Rapture is another popular choice that the pundits on the more conservative and non-secular networks keep screaming about.  And if the government knows something, they’re not speaking up about it (it did get leaked, however, that the president, vice president, and the better part of the executive branch had disappeared also, which is probably the one bright side to this whole shitstorm, Darcy thinks with a sick giggle).  But Darcy, knowing what she knows about what Steve went off to fight, has the sinking suspicion that nothing about this is coming from any place of heavenly goodness. So she locks the doors and the windows, barricading herself inside because what else can she do right now? Being heavily pregnant and, no doubt in her mind, an easy target to some of the people in the world who have been taking advantage of the chaos to be as lawless as they could, she’s got to protect herself as much as she can.

The street outside her apartment building isn’t quite chaos - this town is little and sleepy compared to other places she’s lived, and after having known Thor, it’s hard to compare chaos to that - but there’s enough oddities out there that Darcy feels strange in her skin as she stares out the window.  Cars are smoking and abandoned in the road, where their drivers had disappeared mid-travel and crashed to a halt on the curb. Somewhere there’s an upturned bicycle with a wheel still spinning. On the sidewalk across the way there are a couple of people with semi-automatic guns patrolling in the twilight, and her stomach clenches again.  It’s the inevitable result of chaos, isn’t it? Someone’s going to be out there attempting to restore order, no matter what the cost.

She has to believe that Steve’s okay, that he’s busy working to try and fix this, and that’s why he hasn’t been able to get in touch with her yet.

There’s a knock at her front door, immediately followed by, “Hey, Miss Lewis, are you in there?”  

It’s her neighbor’s voice and, at the very least, a familiar face in the world.  Darcy shuffles over to open the door, revealing a balding, bearded, heavy-set middle aged man wearing a motorcycle vest and a concerned look on his face.  “Hey, Jack,” she says wearily, rubbing a hand over her belly. “What’s going on?”

“I’m just checking to see who’s still around in the building,” Jack says, glancing past Darcy at the inside of her place.  “There aren’t many of us left.”

“It’s just me here now,” Darcy replies, slumping down against the door.  “My mom...yeah.”

“Is Steve here?” 

“He’s on a business trip.”  She sighs, runs a hand over her stomach again, feeling the baby move like moths fluttering about.  “How’s your daughter?”

Jack nods, a slight smile breaking out on his face.  “She and the grandkid are fine, thank god. No word about the son-in-law yet, but that’s an acceptable loss.”

“Gee, tell me how you really feel.”  Darcy lets out a small smile of her own, trying to muster up the energy to at least be friendly.  It’s hard, though, and she’s still near petrified if she lets herself think about Steve. “I’m just going to hole up here until we know more about what’s going on.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Jack says.  “If you need anything, you let me know, got it?  Food, baby supplies, whatever. You hear me?”

“I do.  Thank you, Jack.”  

“Anytime.  I’m right down the hall for whatever you need.”

Jack moves along to the next apartment and Darcy slips back inside of hers, locking the door and shoving a chair beneath the knob for good measure.

“All right, baby, it’s just you and me now,” Darcy murmurs, patting her belly again.  

**********

Sleep is all but impossible.  It’s hard to begin with, what with her massive stomach and a lack of Steve’s familiar presence in the bed, with the fact that their baby is no respecter of the clock.  But the world’s ending outside, how can she sleep through that? So Darcy sets up camp on the couch instead, a mug of tea on the table and a blanket around her shoulders.  She tries to watch some more of the news coverage, but it’s all speculation and reviewing events, with no new information coming in, so she switches over to some forgettable sitcom to distract her brain instead.

_ Maybe if it’s dull enough I’ll pass out from boredom _ , Darcy thinks.

She’s finally dropped off into a sort of doze when her phone chimes with an incoming message.  Darcy picks it up, squinting hard to see the screen through the sleep haze, and the little alert reveals that the message is from Steve’s familiar number.

_ Darcy? _ it reads.   _ Are you there? _

She fumbles the phone in her haste, almost dropping it before typing back with shaking fingers.   _ I’m here.  I’m okay. We’re okay. _

It’s only a few seconds after that the phone rings.  “Steve?” she asks, leveraging herself as upright as she can on the couch.

_ “Hey, sweetheart.” _

“Oh my god.”  She exhales roughly, the noise sounding closer to a sob than what she’d like.  “Are you okay?”

_ “I’m...unharmed,” _ Steve says, hesitantly, and there’s a wealth of knowledge in what he doesn’t say.  

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

_ “Unimaginably so.” _

It all spills out from Steve at that point, the entirely of the whole, horrifying story that had led to that one single moment and half of the life on earth disappearing into nothing.  Darcy, more than anything else, wants to take him into her arms and hug the hell out of him, let him know that she’s there and she’ll do what she can.

“So what do we do now?” Darcy asks, chewing at her lower lip until it’s almost bloody.  She scrubs her hand roughly over her face, wiping away the tear tracks that Steve’s story had left behind.

_ “We fight,”  _ he replies, and Darcy can all but see the defeated shrug in his shoulders.   _ “Somehow.  I don’t even know what’s left to fight against.” _

“What about coming home instead?”  Darcy shifts, carefully, fearful to wake the baby even though he’s probably used to the late night movement by now.  “In less than a month this baby’s going to drop, and I need you by my side for it.”

Steve’s silent for a moment, no doubt lost in thought.   _ “What if you could come here?” _

“Huh?”

_ “Come to Wakanda.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave any time soon given everything, but I know I can get a plane to pick you up and bring you here.  It's safe here.” _

There’s a moment of hesitation on Darcy’s part; she doesn’t want to leave her home, especially with her nesting instincts kicking in.  But then she realizes - what exactly does she have left here that makes it a home? Her mom’s gone, and as she hasn’t heard from her stepdad he’s most likely dust also.  Her partner, the father of her child, is halfway across the world, in a place that’s more advanced medically and technologically than New Mexico could currently dream of, even if the world’s gone entirely to shit in the meantime.

“Yeah, I will.  I want you by my side when I pop this critter out,” Darcy says, feeling entirely confident in her decision.  “When do we leave?” 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Jane Foster, and an important realization dawns on Darcy and Jane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. It's been a while. More than. But after that gut wrencher of an End Game trailer today, I need to get off my butt and start getting more of this story out there. While the story isn't finished yet, and probably won't be before the movie comes out, I do have seven chapters written already, with a tentative final chapter count of sixteen chapters and an epilogue. At the very least, I've got a six page outline completed that lays out the upcoming chapters. So the idea is there, I just need to get it into story form.
> 
> Just a reminder, this story was begun before we really knew anything about Captain Marvel or End Game, even the title, and therefore nothing from the movie and trailers will really apply here. And honestly, this story is an AU of an AU - all bets are off as it is.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me over these last few months, and I hope you stay around and enjoy the ride!

When half of the earth's population disappears into dust in a matter of minutes, apocalyptic and rapture are two of the words that have become favorites of the remaining newscasters, Darcy is fast discovering.  Given that her pregnancy is still progressing steadily along and her mobility is getting less and less, she spends the next week safe behind the locked door of her apartment. 

Steve has been able to get a few text messages and phone calls out to her in the meantime - the satellites and signals are still going strong, meaning there are at least enough people still remaining on the planet to keep the basic functions up and running.  He's been working on arranging the jet to get her out of the US and into Wakanda, but given the circumstances she knows that getting Cap's baby mama (which is not the phrase Steve had used but what the hell - Darcy will definitely call it like it is) out of the States ranks low on the list of things that need to be done.     
  
So, she stays inside where it's quiet, only venturing out into the hallway to ask Jack to bring back some groceries for her on one of his scavenging trips outside.  Times like this, she's grateful that her neighbor is batshit crazy and not scared of anything - like he’s almost gleeful to venture out in the rapture and be a force of chaotic good in the world.   
  
But one day, about a week after she saw her mother crumble apart in front of her, there's a knock at the door that's entirely unexpected.  Darcy feels her stomach clench, because she knows Jack has gone out for the day and said that he wouldn't be back until the following evening.  So there's no reason for anyone to come around knocking on her door. As quickly as she can, which isn't all that quick these days, she slips into the bedroom to pull her small revolver out of the bedside drawer.     
  
The gun isn't technically hers, nor is it Steve's.  But rather, Bucky had handed it off to her when he'd come around about a month prior, saying that there was a potentially earth shattering mission happening and that was the only reason he was pulling Cap out of his retirement by way of fake death.  "You shouldn't have to use this," Bucky had said as he presented her with the weapon, when Steve was in the other room packing up his bags, "but if things go south and no one's around to defend you, be sure to protect yourself, your mom, and my nephew there, you hear?  A taser's great, but it'll only get you so far."

_ Oh, Bucky… _ she thinks as she checks that the gun is loaded.  Steve had told her the whole story of what had happened out there in Wakanda, how absolutely insane it was even for this world that they’re currently living in, leaving her in tears by the end of it.  Everything makes her cry these days - damn hormones - but the cracking of Steve’s voice as he ran through the events was enough to break her heart. 

First thing she’s going to do when she gets to Wakanda is give Steve the biggest, tightest hug possible.   
  
Darcy curls her fingers around the handle, feeling the solid weight settle in her palm, and creeps as silently as her bulk can towards the door of the apartment.  "Who is it?" she calls out, trying to make sure her voice sounds as steady as possible.   
  
"It's Jane!"   
  
Darcy's breath rushes out of her in relief and the hand holding the gun drops to her side as she lunges for the door.  She pulls it open, nearly tearing it off of the hinges and revealing Jane, looking a little frazzled and messy, but otherwise whole and unharmed.   
  
"Wow, you're...huge," Jane blurts out, her eyes raking up and down Darcy's form.   
  
Darcy just rolls her eyes.  “Yeah, I haven’t seen my feet in what feels like years.  Get in here.” As soon as the door’s closed Darcy wraps Jane in the strongest hug her expansive belly will allow.  “It is so good to see you.”

“You too.”  Jane untangles herself from Darcy, scrubbing a hand across her eyes.  “I wasn’t sure if you were still here. Half the world’s gone out there.”

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel bloated.”  Darcy sighs and shuffles over to the couch, carefully putting it on the coffee table.  “My mom’s gone. And you could have just called instead of hauling yourself all the way out from Virginia.”

Jane sits down next to her, and it feels good to have another body in the apartment once more, Darcy thinks.  “I know. But after the disappearances what’s left of the government decided to raid my lab looking for...for I don’t even know what, at this point.  I just thought it would be better to get the hell out of there before I ran into Thunderbolt Ross. Who, unfortunately, is still alive. Erik, though…”

“He’s gone too?”  

Jane shakes her head, slumping back into the couch cushions.  “No, but he ran off almost right after the dusting and I haven’t been able to find him since.”

“You look exhausted.  When was the last time you’ve eaten?” Darcy asks.  

“Starting on that momming thing early, aren’t you?”

“I might as well practice now, because once this chestburster pops out I gotta hit the ground running.”  Darcy pats her belly and feeling the baby kick back in response. The answer to Jane’s problem hits her quickly, and she twists to look at her.  “If you had the opportunity to get out of the country, would you take it?”

Jane’s brow wrinkles, a frown pursing her lips.  “What do you mean?”

“Steve’s working on getting me a ride to Wakanda.  What’s left of the Avengers are holed up there for the foreseeable future.  Wanna tag along? Pretty sure they’re just as messed up as the rest of the world right now, but at least Thundercunt Ross can’t get to you there.”

Jane’s silent, pensive, but there’s a gleam in her eyes that Darcy recognizes all too well.  “Are their sciences as impressive as we’ve been led to believe?”

“If Steve’s right, even more than.  It’s just...”

“What?”

“Thor’s there, too.”

Darcy watches as Jane’s face goes through a cycle of emotions, eventually settling on something strong and steady.  “I can handle it. I was the one who broke up with him. And honestly, if the choice is between dealing with an ex and getting tossed in some secret government prison for the rest of my life?”

“Not exactly a hard choice.”

“Nope.”  Jane gets to her feet with an ease that Darcy envies hard.  “All right. We’re going to eat some snacks, watch some movies with whatever Netflix has managed to keep up and running, and try not to think about the outside world for the next few hours.”

“Excellent plan,” Darcy states with a firm nod.

A few hours later both women are slumped down on opposite sides of the couch, feet tangled in the middle with a shared blanket over them.  The sun’s gone down outside, and the only lights in the apartment are the single bulb in the kitchenette and the glow coming from the television.  “You know, Steve told me something interesting the last time we spoke.”

“Did he?” Jane murmurs sleepily, eyes only half focused on the television screen.

“Yeah.  Well, it came from Thor originally, but it’s still relevant.  You remember that Aether stuff that got stuck in you back in London?”

Jane lifts her head to give Darcy a half-hearted glare.  “It’s kind of hard to forget.”

“Well, apparently, that stuff in solid form is one of those very same so called Infinity Stones that caused this whole damn mess.”  Darcy pauses, her brain whirling hard trying to put the pieces together. She pushes herself somewhat upright, staring Jane straight in the eye.  “Which means that you may be one of the only people in the entire damn universe to have encountered one of those shiny pieces of shit and come out alive and whole afterwards.”

Jane’s eyes are wide, and Darcy can tell that the implications have hit her hard.  “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”  Jane takes a deep breath.  “Okay, now I am definitely going to Wakanda with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you really, really want to read ahead, you can find the later parts of the story at my tumblr: aenariasbookshelf.tumblr.com. Thanks for reading!


End file.
